House votes to censure Rep. Charles Rangel, D-NY, over misconduct

View full sizeHouse Television, via APThis video frame grab image shows Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., speaking of the floor of the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday. He asked for leniency in the sunset of his career, but the House voted overwhelmingly to censure him.

WASHINGTON — The House rejected an attempt to reduce Rep. Charles Rangel’s punishment for financial and fundraising misconduct from censure to a reprimand, then voted to censure the 80-year-old Harlem Democrat. Rangel becomes the 23rd House member to be censured.

The vote on reducing Rangel's punishment failed 267-146. The roll call vote on censure was 333-79.

Shortly before the vote, Rangel offered an apology and a plea for leniency in the sunset of his career. He agreed he broke congressional rules but said the censure proposed by the House ethics committee was unfair.

The dapper Rangel, wearing a blue suit, blue tie and a blue handkerchief, faced his colleagues and told them, “I have made serious mistakes” including filing misleading financial disclosure forms and failing to pay all his taxes. But he pleaded with the House to be “guided by fairness.”

Censure is the most serious House punishment short of expulsion. Rangel will have to appear at the front of the chamber while Speaker Nancy Pelosi reads the resolution adopted by the House. His supporters asked instead for a reprimand, which would eliminate that humiliating appearance.

Before Rangel spoke the chairman of the House ethics committee, Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, said the censure her committee recommended was consistent with a Democratic pledge to run “the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history.”

She said Rangel “violated the public trust” while serving in influential positions including chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

Rangel, who brought up his combat experience in the Korean War in making his case, did not specifically propose a lesser reprimand. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said censure has been reserved for lawmakers who enriched themselves or were otherwise corrupt.

Rangel was at times contrite, saying that members of Congress “have a higher responsibility than most people” for ethical conduct and that senior lawmakers like himself “should act as a model” for newer lawmakers. “I brought it on to myself,” he said of his troubles.

Yet, the 40-year congressional veteran insists he did not intend to break any House rules, and he walked out of the ethics committee’s deliberations last month because, he said, he had been treated unfairly for “good faith mistakes.” The panel found him guilty on 11 of 13 charges and overwhelmingly recommended that he be censured.

It’s a difficult sunset for Rangel’s long career. A jovial backslapper with a distinctive gravelly voice, Rangel was re-elected in November with more than 80 percent of the vote despite being under an ethics cloud for more than two years. He has argued that censure is reserved for corrupt politicians — and he’s not one of them.

He also has been making a more personal plea, asking colleagues to remember that he won a Purple Heart after he was wounded in combat in Korea, to focus on his efforts for the underprivileged and to understand that he has great respect for the institution he has served for so long. He’s tied for fourth in House seniority.